Architects and Designers - What's the Chief Glue?

In a world of seven billion people and counting, innovative design has become more important than ever. From residential to transportation to healthcare, how can we create an innovative built environment that caters to humanity’s changing needs? These are the questions that occupy leading design firms. For Olson Kundig’s CEO Hemanshu Parwani, or "HP" for short, the goal is to source top talent and deploy staff in ways that solve specific problems for clients—and benefit the world at large. Here, HP explains why it's valuable to follow a design-led approach, ask the right questions, and embrace innovation at every turn.

Interview Takeaways

• Why now is the time to become an architect
• Design is not a commodity
• Be a design-led firm
• Identify problems to find opportunities
• The summit is not the goal
• Don’t fixate on titles
• Embrace innovation
• Look for talent, not resources
• Let the project create the budget
• The role of operations
• Running a firm is like running a project
• Set criteria for new projects

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